Why the discrepancies between ASL and English?

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jenni-m

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I know part of it is grammar, and part of it is complexity, and partly a lack of standardization.

But I feel this does not account for the MASSIVE discrepancy between an English dictionary and an ASL dictionary.

The biggest ASL dictionary I have seen is around 5,000 signs. most are between 1,000 and 2,000.

The first one of my Webster's dictionaries that I happened to pick up off my shelf has over 500,000 words. Some of these are different tenses, and some are synonyms etc... but the majority are individual words, and I know most of these words in the particular one that I picked up (at LEAST 300,000 words, as a conservative estimate.)

I don't see how this difference adds up. I understand that it can be harder to convey things with two hands and ten fingers, visually, but come on... there is a vast difference between 1,500 and half a million... I don't think this is all accounted for in just grammar and structure.
 
ASL is not English

jenni-m said:
I know part of it is grammar, and part of it is complexity, and partly a lack of standardization.

But I feel this does not account for the MASSIVE discrepancy between an English dictionary and an ASL dictionary.

The biggest ASL dictionary I have seen is around 5,000 signs. most are between 1,000 and 2,000.

The first one of my Webster's dictionaries that I happened to pick up off my shelf has over 500,000 words. Some of these are different tenses, and some are synonyms etc... but the majority are individual words, and I know most of these words in the particular one that I picked up (at LEAST 300,000 words, as a conservative estimate.)

I don't see how this difference adds up. I understand that it can be harder to convey things with two hands and ten fingers, visually, but come on... there is a vast difference between 1,500 and half a million... I don't think this is all accounted for in just grammar and structure.
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jenni-m - ASL is not English. Many people think that is English because English using people have put the English word/language to the ASL sign. There isn't a different ASL sign for every word in the English dictionary.

M2B
 
That's what I was going to say too. And, often 3 or 4 words in an English sentence can be combined into one single ASL sign. Add that up and that accounts for a large part of the discrepancy you are looking at.
 
it's considerably easier to speak and write words than to sign and fingerspell. a written language's vocabulary can be huge because permutations of letters are potentially infinite. the only thing keeping the English dictionary from having 500 centillion words is our imagination. we just need to invent ideas and things to assign more words to.

with sign languages, there are only so many shapes and motions one can perform. just imagine having to learn 500,000 signs. it would be impossible. so many signs would look so much alike that it would be impossible to understand what the hell anyone was trying to say, or the signs would have to be so long and complex that communication would move at a snail's pace. plus, when new signs are introduced into the language, it takes a looooong time for them to be established and recognized by the entire ASL community.
 
August said:
it's considerably easier to speak and write words than to sign and fingerspell. a written language's vocabulary can be huge because permutations of letters are potentially infinite. the only thing keeping the English dictionary from having 500 centillion words is our imagination. we just need to invent ideas and things to assign more words to.

with sign languages, there are only so many shapes and motions one can perform. just imagine having to learn 500,000 signs. it would be impossible. so many signs would look so much alike that it would be impossible to understand what the hell anyone was trying to say, or the signs would have to be so long and complex that communication would move at a snail's pace. plus, when new signs are introduced into the language, it takes a looooong time for them to be established and recognized by the entire ASL community.
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Don't forget we can fingerspell the words in those gaps. I'm a PSEer/ASLer so I have free rein....call me Smokey Fingers, :lol:
 
August said:
it's considerably easier to speak and write words than to sign and fingerspell. a written language's vocabulary can be huge because permutations of letters are potentially infinite. the only thing keeping the English dictionary from having 500 centillion words is our imagination. we just need to invent ideas and things to assign more words to.

with sign languages, there are only so many shapes and motions one can perform. just imagine having to learn 500,000 signs. it would be impossible. so many signs would look so much alike that it would be impossible to understand what the hell anyone was trying to say, or the signs would have to be so long and complex that communication would move at a snail's pace. plus, when new signs are introduced into the language, it takes a looooong time for them to be established and recognized by the entire ASL community.
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I know all that, and thought I implied that I did.
I'm not saying there should be 500,000 signs.
1,500 seems to go too much the other way, though.
I could understand if it were say, at least 10,000. There is plenty of room for that many permutations, if not more (in my opinion)

All I am trying to say, is I feel there has to be more than a couple thousand signs for it to be a truly viable language, even if every sign is a whole sentence. And yes, it takes time, but somebody isn't doing their job in cataloging and standardizing, I feel.

And yes, most of the time, it works for average daily purposes, and I think ASL is a great concept and language. Like 'income' can be signed as 'money earn', which I feel is quite simple and to the point.

However, I see it is lacking a lot of 'idea words' which would be very useful and not at all hard to sign, or remember.
 
Why does a point need to be made? ASL is a language of its own. It shouldn't matter how many words or signs there are in the ASL language, as long as the intended message is conveyed. I don't know how many words there are in the Russian or Chinese dictionary, but if it is not 500,000 like the English language, does that mean a discrepancy must be noted and an explanation required? No -- each language is its own.
 
I don't think you can judge a language by the number of entries in a dictionary.

Anyone who has studied ASL knows that there are no ASL dictionaries that include every single sign. If there was such a dictionary, it would obviously be a lot bigger than any that are now on the market or online.

Also, English dictionaries include proper nouns, which would be finger spelled in ASL. There's no reason to put all those proper names in ASL dictionaries, so you can't include them in a comparison.

Putting together a dictionary is a time-consuming expensive task. Even once a comprehensive dictionary is compiled, it's not done. Language continues to evolve, so dictionaries are never "finished." Editions of English dictionaries have been in progress for centuries. How long have published ASL dictionaries been around? Have patience and give them a chance to catch up.
 
Not only does it involve grammar and structure, a lot of words are left out.

For instance, this is English...

I am going to go to my friend's house for a party on Friday night.

In ASL...

Friday Night Me Go Party Friend House (I don't know the exact wording or structure.)

"I" is substituted with "Me". "Am", "To", "For", "On" are left out. "ing" is removed from "going".

Adverbs are usually left out of ASL, to my knowledge.

In order to fully understand the English language... words, grammar, and structures needs to be understood. If a person uses ASL and nothing else, then they're only limited to their own limited vocabulary and their own form of structure. That's something that's considered a foreign language than your typical English language.
 
Reba said:
[...]
Anyone who has studied ASL knows that there are no ASL dictionaries that include every single sign. If there was such a dictionary, it would obviously be a lot bigger than any that are now on the market or online.
[...]
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You partly saw my point and then skirted around it.

Do you propose to tell me that ASL is worked on just as hard as another language is? That it is compiled just as seriously? That it is trying to be standardized as much? That we have many linguists studying it and perfecting it, day in and day out?

I somehow don't believe it is being given the same attention. But, excuse me if I am wrong.

VamPyroX said:
[...]
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I know, and I take this into account, too.
 
http://jdsde.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/2/1/57.pdf

Here is a good read. I hate PDF files, but there it is...

Excerpt:

Although there is a growing awareness that literacy is not equivalent to reading and writing skills [...], it has become apparent that we need a clearer explanation of ASL literacy. Wilcox has taken an interactionist approach to the understanding of literacy in the Deaf community. We wish to focus here on ASL literacy and three distinct components of literacy: functional, cultural and critical literacies. [...]

Functional literacy involves basic language skills that enable a person to communicate effectively in the DEAF-WORLD. Cultural literacy refers to the values, heritage, and shared experiences necessary to understand and interpret the relationships of ASL literary works to our lives as Deaf people. Critical literacy relates to the use of literature as a means of empowerment and an ideological awareness of the DEAF-WORLD in relation to other worlds.

Cummins and Baker have made it clear that educational programs involving linguistic minority group members that focus only on the development of functional literacy skills in the minority language do so at the expense of cultural and critical literacy, and that the result is disempowerment and limited educational success.
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Here is something else:
A few basics of American Sign Language (ASL) Linguistics

Excerpts:

Some of the basic studies in the linguistics of ASL is; morphemes, phonemes, theory called hold-movement-hold, semantics, pragmatics, and understanding the five registers. Morphology - the study of morphemes - a unit of language that is meaningful, can’t be broken down into smaller meaningful units, and can be broken down into smaller units that do not have independent meaning. There are free morphemes - words that have meaning by themselves and don’t need to be attached to some other word to have meaning. For example; the sign zebra is a free morpheme, you can’t break it down into smaller meaningful parts. There are bound morphemes - morphemes that must be attached to another morpheme, and if unattached, it becomes meaningless.
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Semantics means it’s meaning, and Pragmatics is how language is used. A register (or style) is a label for the way we vary our speech or sign when we communicate with people in different settings, and this depends on the closeness or distance we feel to that individual (or group) because of authority, goal, or acquaintance. There are 5 different registers; Frozen, Formal, Consultative, Informal-Casual, and Intimate. Having an understanding of these registers will help to communicate better in different situations. (Bar-Tzur, 2001).
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so, what is the point you're trying to prove?

reba is right, no one can judge our language by number. like vampy said, we don't have adverbs, articles, props and so many more in our language. we don't even have 500,000 fingers, just ten and they hearies have more than 30 teeth along with a tongue drumming them and over 40 soundtones plus millions of drum hairs in ears where they compromise with english so of course can we say they have more than us? ;)

in fact, 60% of ASL we use our body language and facial expressions which is why we have fewer words in dictionary. if our hands are tied behind us and only we are to communicate with our facial expressions, we could go on conversing like normal, no words at all. totally seperate from gestures because most of our facial expressions aren't univerisal. so only visual languages, ASL/LSF/AUSLAN/ETC., all in one is special, nothing like other spoken languages. period. so unlikely english, there are so much unnecessary words that are missing.

you want 10,000? okay, sum up traditional ASL, west/east/south/north ASL and as well as other countries such like france that uses ASL too (as our language is always changing in time), I'm sure you'll find more than 20,000 or so.

but again, numbers don't matter and why the discrepancies? because people like you are making it more complicated! :giggle: seriously, chunk these links out dear, as you can see it only (says) sees basics! ASL is OUR language, end of discussion. I don't care what they "think", "see" or "discover".. otherwise we'd be unable to converse our needs at all. and, obviously, to understand "the discrepancies", you'll have to be deaf to understand.
 
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jenni-m said:
You partly saw my point and then skirted around it.

Do you propose to tell me that ASL is worked on just as hard as another language is? That it is compiled just as seriously? That it is trying to be standardized as much? That we have many linguists studying it and perfecting it, day in and day out?

I somehow don't believe it is being given the same attention. But, excuse me if I am wrong....
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Why is ASL not given the same "attention" as English?

Bottom line: Follow the money.

If and when more profit can be attached to the study, teaching, publishing and use of ASL, then there will be a proportionate increase in the study, teaching, publishing and use of ASL.

That's the harsh reality of a material world.
 
Reba said:
Why is ASL not given the same "attention" as English?

Bottom line: Follow the money.

If and when more profit can be attached to the study, teaching, publishing and use of ASL, then there will be a proportionate increase in the study, teaching, publishing and use of ASL.

That's the harsh reality of a material world.
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Yeah... I guess I hadn't considered that. (unusual for me because I tend to look for money as a cause a lot of times, hah!)
Very good point...
 
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